In the second half of 2015, pharmaceutical spending that passes through local pharmacies tends to stabilize compared to the previous year. This is the snapshot that emerges from the latest expenditure surveys conducted by Federfarma on the basis of data collected from associated businesses: in the period January-September 2015, the pharmaceutical expenditure under the agreement decreased by 0.8% compared to the first nine months of 2014. At first glance, the slowdown could be partly explained by the changes that led to prescriptions in the period: recipes are in fact down (-2.1%, again compared to the first nine months of
2014) but their average value increases by 1.4%: in other words, doctors prescribe a little less but tend to opt for slightly higher priced drugs. However, given that in the last three months of 2015 AIFA renegotiated the prices of various range A specialties downwards, it is likely that in the next surveys the data on the value of recipes will already show a countertrend.
Lastly, the incidence also remains substantially unchanged of co-payments and co-payments to be paid by patients on gross pharmaceutical expenditure: it was equal to 13.6% in September 2014, it stopped at 13.5% in September 2015. Overall, Italians paid co-payments on drugs for more than 1.11 billion euro, the 64% of which - says Aifa - in the form of sharing between the reimbursement portion of the cheaper equivalent and the price of the drug dispensed.
(AS -26/01/2016 – Federfarma)
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Pharmacy. In 2015, the sector grew by 1.6%. Reached 25.3 billion. Ims Health data
